Qatar

"Migrant workers in Qatar face a range of abuses at the hands of their employers. In some of the cases investigated by Amnesty International, these abuses amount to forced labour and human trafficking. Some arrive to find that the nature of the work, their salaries, hours of work or conditions are very different to those they had been promised. Many migrant workers find their employers delay their pay or stop paying them at all."

"'How do you transform into a nation without also transforming the traditional, monarchical, patriarchal system?' [historian Allen Fromherz] asks. As the small but natural-gas-rich country emerges onto the world's stage, this and other questions are unavoidable: Are the American universities actors in the country's future or merely props? Can they teach students to think critically about the contradictions and changes in Qatar while under the patronage of its ruling family?"

Anthony Shadid argues that Qatar wields powerful influence in the Middle East and is advancing a shift in Arab political ideology toward a conservative, democratic Middle East governed by mainstream Islamist parties.

Meghan L. O'Sullivan argues that Qatar is a country of strategic importance in the Middle East with assets that other states in the region currently lack - and that U.S. ties with the nation are worth strengthening.